


A Single Step

by bouquetofwhoopsiedaisies



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family, Family Dynamics, Gen, Happy Ending, Implied Mpreg, Implied Past Trauma, M/M, Nonverbal Communication, and the story is about after that not the implied mpreg itself, but in a possible-because-of-alien-biology way not like an ABO way, cross-posted from a tumblr request, the BoM only shows up in the last chapter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2019-04-18 19:25:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14220099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bouquetofwhoopsiedaisies/pseuds/bouquetofwhoopsiedaisies
Summary: After the war with the Galra Empire finished, Keith and Shiro settled down on a nice planet together and started a small, happy family.  Then, their daughter was kidnapped, and they spent years searching for her.  When they find her, she is scared and volatile, a feral creature that needs to be taught how to trust again.  Luckily, her dads are ready to help her every step of the way, even if those steps are slow to come.  A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> (Originally posted on [tumblr](https://bouquetofwhoopsiedaisies.tumblr.com/post/171759954429/i-love-your-blade-of-marmora-x-keith-series-so-i), but tumblr and I are currently having issues agreeing on what constitutes as "working" so I'm posting it here as well)
> 
> This is loosely related to my [Keith and the Blade of Marmora](https://archiveofourown.org/series/924888) series but takes place much, much later and is really only tangential to it, just set in the same AU with the same specifics of Galra biology (which can be found in the above tumblr post). The TL;DR is that Galra males can get pregnant if they so choose, and after settling down with Shiro Keith did and they had a daughter, who unfortunately then was kidnapped when she was young. And now onto the story!

She has Shiro’s eyes, Keith notices, but the fire inside them is far more familiar as his own.

That same guarded, distrustful gaze that looked back at him in the mirrors of foster families houses (so, so many houses, never a home) is now watching him from the shadows of her hiding place.  There’s a heat smoldering in her indigo-colored eyes, like flames that are only just barely tempered into coals, ready to spark into a deadly inferno at the slightest provocation.  In himself, it had been snapping angrily at the adults who only pretended to care about him, running away whenever the costs outweighed the benefits, and learning to cut his own loses at a young age.  In her, he has a suspicion that one wrong move will send her lunging out of the shadows and attacking him with that jagged shard of glass clutched in her hand.  He doesn’t know how much damage she would be able to inflict on him – she would have barely reached mid-thigh, had she been standing up, and she was clearly starving and skinny – but he worried about her hurting herself with the crude weapon. 

Keith swallows thickly and keeps his eyes on her as he calls over his shoulder, as softly as he dares.  “…Shiro?” 

Even at that, she flinches and backs further into her burrow, trying to squeeze through the impossibly small crack. 

“Hey, hey, no, it’s okay,” he coos, slowly lowering himself into a crouch.  “No need to be scared.  We’re going to help you, okay?  We just want to help you.” 

She eyes him distrustfully and keeps trying to push herself as far back into the crack as she can.  Her foot slips on a loose fragment of a brick, the movement letting her ragged, too-big shift slip down a bit and bare her shoulder, and Keith goes completely still, riveted to the spot.  Gods, he had had a feeling, but… there it is, a reddish-purple birthmark the size of a quarter and shaped like a moon; the unrefutable proof that this was their baby girl.  He remembered holding her in his arms for the first time, himself feeling sweaty and exhausted while she slept clutching the soft blanket she was wrapped in, and gently touching the mark on her left collarbone with just the tip of his finger.  Krolia had triumphantly declared it a sign that her genes had been passed on and they were Galra markings, but Keith and Shiro suspected it was just an ordinary birthmark.  Either way, it is easily distinguishable. 

His heart aches like a dam has burst through, but when he whispers her name and inches closer, she just recoils further.  She lifts the jagged piece of glass, small hand tightening around it, and lets out a hiss when the sharp edge of the makeshift hilt cuts her palm and fingers.  Keith stops immediately, afraid she will hurt herself more. 

“Keith?”  Shiro calls, walking towards the two of them.  “What’s—?”

Keith taps a finger to his lips and straightens up as he moves away from the crack in the wall.  “It’s her.”  He whispers, when he and Shiro are a short distance away but he can still keep an eye on the crack.  “It’s Suki, it’s our baby girl.”  He takes a deep breath as Shiro’s eyes widen, then he goes on.  “She’s scared, and volatile.  She’s got a makeshift weapon, but I don’t want her to hurt herself…”

Shiro looks back at the crack in the wall, his expression pained.  It’s obvious he wants to run to her and hold her tight, just as much as Keith.  He swallows.  “See if you can get her out.  I’ll guard the entrance to the alley and make sure no one comes in.”  He pauses to press a kiss to Keith’s cheek, then leaves, pulling out his bayard as he goes.   

Keith drops to a crouch a few feet away from the crack in the wall, keeping his movements slow.  “Suki?  Baby, do you remember me?  It’s daddy Keith.  Remember me, Suki?” 

She grips the glass tighter with a pained grimace.  The distrust burning in her eyes hurts Keith’s heart.  He swallows against the tears and takes a deep breath.  Slowly – oh so slowly – he unclips his mother’s knife from his belt and brings it around in front of him, setting it on the ground between himself and the crack where she’s hiding.  He meets her eyes.  “This is a knife.  It’s like what you have, but if you hold it here, it won’t hurt you.”  He wraps his fingers around the hilt to show her.  She watches his every movement carefully, eyes taking in far more than a four-year-old should ever have to know.  He slides the knife halfway out of the sheath, enough to show a bit of the blade but stopping before it can look too threatening.  “You can use this part if you’re scared.  But if you’re not scared, it can stay like this.  It won’t hurt you like this, but you can take it out if you become scared.”  She watches him raptly while he slides the blade back into the sheath with a quiet click.  He takes his hand back and moves away.  “I’m going to sit right here, baby.  I won’t look at you.  If you want to, put down the glass and you can have the knife, okay?”

She doesn’t answer him, but he didn’t expect her to.  He sits down with his back to the building across the narrow alley from her, leaving the knife in her reach.  Then he closes his eyes and waits. 

For a few long minutes, nothing happens.  He can hear the hustle and bustle of the street past the mouth of the alley, but it sounds distant.  Then, he hears a quiet shuffle, a rustle of fabric against stone, and a soft metallic scrape, then the near-silent pat of slow, bare footsteps over the cobblestones.  Then silence.  His heart pounds in his chest and in his ears, so hard that he’s sure she can hear it, but still he doesn’t open his eyes.  He forces himself to wait a minute before he opens his eyes as slowly as possible.

She’s standing in front of him now, her burning eyes at the same level as his sitting down.  Her dark hair is long and unruly, and her arms and legs are streaked with dirt under the simple, shift-like dress she is wearing.  The chunk of glass is back by the crack in the wall, cherry-red blood smeared across the crystalline surface.  In her right hand is his knife, in the left is the sheath, blade bared and in front of her but pointed down.  She doesn’t say anything, but he understands her anyway: _if you try to hurt me, I will hurt you_.  She could have hurt him, if she wanted to.  But something is staying her hand, for now.  Keith can’t help but wonder if it’s the same something that made him offer her the knife in the first place, maybe even the same something that prompted his mother to leave the blade with him. 

The shape of her eyes is Shiro’s, Keith can see.  But the anger, the hurt, the fear, all burning in her indigo irises… that’s far more familiar.  Keith wants to make it leave her, but he knows it isn’t that easy.  He was once in her place, barefoot and bleeding and angry.  But for now, all they need is one step.  One step at a time.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapters are far shorter than anything I usually post because they were originally just posted on tumblr... (T^T) R.I.P. these teeny tiny chapters... they look so strange to me...

It takes some time to convince her to follow him out of the alley.  All of his offers for her to take his hand are met with a cold stare and little fingers tightening around the hilt of the knife.  Each rejection crushes Keith’s heart painfully in his chest, but he reminds himself that she is scared, and she might not remember him.  Lord knows he never took his foster parent’s hands when he was young.  They were strangers to him, strangers that he knew wouldn’t even stay in his life for very long.  He only hopes that, if she doesn’t remember him, she won’t think that of him.

They manage to get her home, with a lot of coaxing and promises of food and warm clothes and safety.  She keeps the unsheathed knife in her hand the entire time, ready to attack them if she feels threatened.  Shiro quietly points out that was probably not Keith’s safest decision, but Keith knows he wouldn’t have been able to win her favor without allowing her to feel like she can defend herself.  She handles the blade far better than any child her age should, in a way that makes him think this can’t be the first time she has held and used a weapon (albeit with no formal training).  The thought makes his heart squeeze painfully in his ribcage again.

“Okay, here we are,” Keith forces a smile as Shiro opens the door to their house.  “Do you remember this place, Suki?  This is home.” 

She doesn’t seem to, based on the way she hesitates at the door and peers around, sharp young eyes taking in the hallway and what can be seen of the living room from the doorway.  Her nostrils flare, and there is something strangely feral about her movements, like a wild animal on the lookout for any predators.  Apparently she doesn’t find any dangers, though, because she slowly steps over the threshold and into the house. 

Keith follows her inside and shuts the door as quietly as possible, noticing the way something like fear flashes across her eyes and she lifts the knife just a few inches, hand fisted around the hilt in a white-knuckled grip.  He forces his lips up in a smile that he hopes is reassuring, heart aching for the umpteenth time today.  “We kept your room the same as when you… when you were last here.  It’s right down this hallway.” 

“Do you want to put the knife down, Suki?”  Shiro asks, crouching down to be at eye level. 

She shakes her head and clutches the blade to her chest.  Keith can see the concern and indecision in Shiro’s eyes and the tight set of his jaw. 

“It’s okay,” Keith tells her.  “You can keep the knife as long as you think you need it.  But can you put it back in the sheath, for now?  We don’t want you to get hurt by accident.  Please?  You can take it out again if you think you need to.”

She thinks about it for several long minutes, silent.  Her eyes flick between the two of them.  Then she places the tip of the knife at the mouth of the sheath and slowly slides it inside. 

“Thank you, Suki.”  Keith smiles.  He wants so badly to reach out and hug her, but he knows doing so would scare her and undo all their progress in the past few hours.  “Do you want to see your room?  You can rest, and we’ll make you some food, okay?” 

She considers it, then nods slowly.  She trails behind them down the hall, hands still poised to unsheathe the knife again. 

The room really is just the same as the last time she was in it, but Keith has no idea if she remembers it.  The walls are painted a deep purple with swirling galaxies and pinpricks of stars in shades of white, red, blue, green, yellow, and pink, like the space her dads loved so much.  There is a white dresser against the far wall, and a matching toy chest under the window, a few of her favorite stuffed animals – a well-loved tawny lion and a plush weblum – perched on top as if waiting for someone to play with them again.  Her gaze lingers on the lion, and Keith wonders if she has any memory of it; it had been a present from Pidge and Hunk on the day she was born, and she had scarcely been separated from it for longer than a few minutes.  Until that day, when she had been kidnapped and Keith could only find that little lion lying alone on the street where his baby had vanished. 

He shakes the thought away and notices Shiro eyeing the crib thoughtfully.  It had been where she slept before, of course, but it was hardly appropriate now, as she was four years old.  And something tells him she won’t take kindly to the bars.  “We’ll buy a new bed,” Shiro says quietly, the first part more for Keith than Suki.  “For now, how about a blanket nest?  You used to love making those, remember?” 

She blinks impassively, indicating that she probably doesn’t.

“That sounds good.  We have lots of blankets and pillows.  It’ll be really comfy.”  Keith says.  He and Shiro fetch a number of blankets and pillows from the closet in the hallway and even some couch cushions from the living room, anything to make the most comfortable make-shift bed possible.  When they come back, bedding in hand, they find her standing in front of the toy chest staring at the plush lion, her little brow furrowed in thought.  She reaches out haltingly and closes a hand around the lion’s right arm, which is a little floppy from her carrying it around so much.  Fingers curl around the soft plush fur, fitting right where they used to so often, as if the toy and her hand remember something her mind can’t yet.

Keith meets Shiro’s eyes, and they share a small smile of relief.  There might be a part of her that remembers her life before, even if it is buried deep inside her now.

They set the bedding down and start constructing a make-shift bed out of sheet-covered couch cushions piled high with a nest of blankets, quilts, and pillows.  She wanders closer, knife clutched in her right hand and lion in her left, and watches them from a safe distance, expression still guarded. 

“I’ll go make something to eat.”  Shiro tells Keith.  “How about you try and get her a little cleaner?  We’ll buy her some more clothes in the morning.” 

Keith nods, eyeing the dirty rags she is dressed in now.  None of the baby clothes they had would fit her anymore, and they hadn’t been able to bear buying new clothes while she was missing.  Shiro squeezes his hand, then gets to his feet and heads to the kitchen, leaving the door open behind him.  Keith takes a deep breath and turns to Suki, who is watching him warily.  “I’ll be right back, okay, baby?  I won’t go far.”

She watches him get to his feet, expression unreadable.  He goes into the small adjoined bathroom and wets a washcloth – one of the soft ones, for newborn babies – with warm water at the sink, and grabs a green and purple hooded towel with an alien face on the hood before going back to her.  Taking a seat on the floor, he holds the wet towel in his open palm and reaches for her arm with his other hand.

She jumps back, instantly on guard again.  The stuffed lion gets squished between her palm and the sheath as she draws the knife again, eyes hard and cold.  He freezes, heart stopping.  With what little progress they had made, he had forgotten that she was still scared.  “I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking.  I didn’t mean to scare you.”  He apologizes, slowly drawing his hand back.  He holds out the warm washcloth.  “Here, do you want to wash yourself off?  Just to get the dirt off…” 

She considers it silently for a few moments, then sets down the stuffed lion to take the washcloth from him.  Keith scoots back to give her some more space.  She sits cross-legged on the floor and lays the flat of the knife against her knee while she rubs the wet cloth over her arms.  Sensing that staring at her would only make her more wary, Keith busies himself with folding the alien towel so that the hood is sitting on top, purple and green alien googly-eyes looking up at her, and sets it on the floor between them so she can grab it when she’s finished. 

After rubbing the cloth over her face and down the length of her arms and legs to get the worst of the dirt off, she sets the cloth down and picks up the towel, pausing to tilt her head curiously at the cartoon alien face on the hood.  Keith takes the washcloth back to her bathroom and washes it out at the sink.  He opens the top drawer and pulls out a nightlight with stars cut into the face of it.  Plugging it in, he turns off the overhead light and lets the room be illuminated with the soft blue glow of the nightlight, stars lighting up the walls and ceiling. 

Back in her room, he finds the towel in a crumpled heap on the floor, and his heart lurches when he finds no Suki in sight.  “Suki?”  He calls, fear tinging his voice.  “Suki, baby, where are you?”  He looks around, but she’s not there, and a memory of that day flies to the front of his mind.  Oh god, not again, please not again…

Keith catches sight of the tip of his knife poking out of the blanket nest, right next to a lump about the size of a pillow near the back of the nest.  His panic quells a little when he notices a single indigo-violet eye watching him from under a fold in the blanket.  He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly as he sinks to a crouch, pushing a hand through his hair.  “Oh Suki, I thought I’d lost you again…” Keith sits back, making sure to give her some space.  “You’re here, you’re okay, you’re safe…” he doesn’t know whether he’s trying to reassure her or herself.  Maybe both.  He takes another steadying breath.  “Daddy Shiro’s gonna be back with some food for you soon.  Do you want me to stay here, or leave you alone?”  He doesn’t want to leave her alone, not after all these years apart, but he needs to do what will make her feel safe. 

She doesn’t answer him, just watches him from the depths of the blankets.

He tries again.  “Do you want me to go?”  Please, no…  

She does nothing.  He tries again.  “Stay?”

No response, again.  Then the eye blinks slowly, just once. 

He doesn’t know what that means.  He doesn’t know if it means anything, or if it’s just a coincidence.  But… he has a feeling it’s her way of communicating.  He feels it deep in his heart and he hopes that he’s not just projecting.  It’s the same bone-deep, instinctual feeling he sometimes had when she was first born, and they were fumbling new parents.  Whenever he had questions, something inside him pointed him toward the right answer, like a compass keeping him in tune with her.  He hadn’t had the chance to feel this in a long, long time. 

“Okay, I’ll stay right here.  I’ll keep you safe.”  He promises.  “How about you get some rest, okay?  Daddy Shiro and I will keep you safe, baby.”  He offers her a reassuring smile and lays down on the rug.  She watches him a few moments longer, then the blankets shift a little and he sees the ear and mane of the stuffed lion through the crack by her face.  Her visible eye closes. 

Keith waits a few minutes, then takes a deep, shuddering breath.  His baby is back.  She’s back, but… she’s clearly scarred.  He only hopes that she can heal, now that they have her back.  He closes his eyes against the wet sting he can feel building behind them. 

When he next wakes up, he finds Shiro’s arm around his waist and his body tucked behind his own, a plate – empty save for a few sandwich crumbs – and an empty glass of milk sitting next to the blanket nest, and he can see a head of messy black hair curled up under the blankets again.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some tears, angst, and progress

There’s a lot to catch up on, when one’s child has been missing for a little over two years.  The two of them take turns on all the errands, always keeping one of them in the house with Suki while the other goes out, just in case she needs something.  They replace the crib with a proper bed, and the baby clothes with ones to fit a young child (though she refused to leave the house, so Keith had to buy some in a few different sizes and hope something fit).  They call the police and retract the missing/abducted child case in her name, and they call the rest of the paladins and the Blade of Marmora to notify them of her return.  Both groups had worked with them to scour the galaxy for Suki when she was taken, but it is more than just a courtesy call; all of them had cared for her very deeply and shared Keith and Shiro’s devastation when she disappeared.  Upon hearing she is safe, they all grow excited and want to rush over and see her again, but Keith and Shiro caution that would probably not be wise, at least until she grows less skittish around even just the two of them.  Instead, their friends cover the two of their duties for them for a while and bring by groceries (high-protein, nutrient-rich, yet still child-friendly foods are a must, and something they haven’t exactly been stocking up on in her absence.  Plus, Hunk insists on bringing by some of his own creations that are specially designed to correct her malnourishment, and a few treats just because). 

Keith notices that anytime of their friends stops by, they look around from their place at the door, as if hoping to catch a glimpse of her, but they would be hard-pressed to spot her; Keith and Shiro hardly ever see her, and they are living with her.  She eats the food they make her, wears the clothes they give her, and has moved several choice blankets and pillows into a messy nest atop her new bed, but they seldom see her for longer than a moment before she disappears again.  Sometimes, when Keith is alone in the house, he feels like she is sneaking around and watching him as he moves from room to room, and at night he often hears the squeak of a floorboard or rush of water in the pipes that signals she is moving around the house.  It’s unnerving, like living in a house with a ghost.

“Do you think we should call someone?”  Shiro asks quietly one evening, after four days of barely seeing her. 

Keith gnaws his lip.  “I think she just needs time.  She needs to feel safe, before we can start working on any other issues.” 

“But what if there’s something else we can be doing, to help her recover faster?”  Shiro asks.  “I could start looking for… for psychologists, or something.  Someone who can help with… PTSD?  Neglect?  Social work?  Trauma?”  He sighs and pushes a hand through his hair.  “God, Keith, we don’t even fully know what happened to her yet.  We don’t know what she needs.” 

“No,” Keith admits.  “But no matter what issues there are, she needs time.  Start looking, but… give her another week, at least.”

~~~~~

“ _Ow_!” 

Keith looks up from what he’s doing when he hears the cry of pain that sounds like it came from Shiro.  He hurries to the back of the house, where Shiro is leaving Suki’s room with his right hand pressed over his left forearm, grimace twisting his lips.  He looks up and meets Keith’s eyes, which narrow in suspicion.

“Did you try and take the knife from her?”  Keith asks, somehow already knowing the answer. 

Shiro casts him a withering look as he heads to the bathroom.  “She can’t keep carrying a knife around like a security blanket, Keith.  She’s going to hurt herself.”

“Is she the one who’s bleeding?”  Keith asks, turning on the faucet and fetching a black washcloth from the cabinet (their mutual aesthetic, but also quite convenient for cleaning up blood). 

“...No.”  Shiro admits grouchily.  “But it’s only a matter of time.” 

“In a matter of time, she’ll be able to feel safe enough that she won’t need it.”  Keith tells him, washing the blood off.  It’s a shallow cut, like the prick of claws from a warning swipe of a cat.  It won’t even need stitches.  His pride is bruised, more than anything.  Keith dries the skin off and lays a bandaid over the cut, then presses a kiss to it.  “Give her time.  Patience yields focus, remember?” 

Shiro watches him for a few moments, then sighs.  “Fine.”

As they leave the bathroom, Shiro knocks Keith’s shoulder lightly with his own.  “Patience yields focus, huh?”

“Wise words I heard from someone once.”  Keith shoots him a sly look.

“Gosh, wonder who that was.”  Shiro chuckles. 

~~~~~

Despite his words of reassurance to Shiro, Keith can’t help the worry that gnaws at him.  It finally grows strong enough that, after a trip to the grocery store, he parks at a nearby forest preserve, hikes deep into the woods, and dials a number on his communicator.

“Mom?”  He takes a deep breath.  “How old was I, when you left Earth?” 

Her voice softens from her initial brusque greeting.  “I don’t know, exactly; I didn’t fully understand time on your father’s planet.  A few decaphoebes, at least.  But you were young, yes.”

“Young enough to not remember you, when we met.”  Keith says quietly, heart sinking. 

“Perhaps not on the surface.”  Krolia says.  “But sometimes the heart remembers more than the mind can.”

He nods; when they met, he had felt, on some deep level that he couldn’t explain, that she was familiar to him.  In the heat of battle, and after so many years of fruitless searching, he had pushed away the notion until it was laid blunt and clear before him to accept.

“How… how did it feel?”  He asks.  “When you realized… that I had grown up, without you.” 

She goes quiet for a few moments, and he bites his lip as he waits.  Light sifts through the leaves above him and casts dapples of warm light on the forest floor that sway as the leaves do the same in the light breeze. 

“I felt -- feel -- proud of the man you’ve become.”  She says finally.  “You’re strong, and brave, and kind, and a skilled fighter.  You’ve become everything I could have wanted you to be.”  She sighs.  “I’m just sorry it happened in my absence.  I should have been there for you, Keith.”

He leans back against the trunk of a tree, hugging his stomach to try and stop the worry and guilt and fear churning inside.  “What if… what if you weren’t proud?”  Keith asks, barely above a whisper.  “What if I grew up and I wasn’t brave or strong or any of that?  What if I became scared and distrustful and… and broken?” 

“Nothing could break my pride in you.  But I would have felt devastated.”  She tells him.  “What you’re feeling is natural, Keith.  But I promise you, it will get better.  She is young.  You can both come back from this.  The bond between a mother and child is too strong to be severed by anything other than sheer will, and a sharp one at that.”

“She seems pretty intent on severing it.”  He mutters, sliding down the trunk of the tree to rest between the enormous roots.  He wraps his free arm around his drawn-up knees, suddenly feeling cold.

“I doubt that.”  Krolia says.  “You have done nothing to warrant such a deliberate break.  You never stopped searching for her, and you have tended to her needs and done what you can to make her feel safe since finding her.  That is hardly abandonment.” 

He can’t help but notice the bitter twist in her voice at the end.  “You didn’t abandon me.”  He says softly.  He thought she had, once, and it hurt more than he could put into words.  But he is older now, and he knows her reasons for leaving. 

“I didn’t want to.”  She sighs.  “But that doesn’t mean I didn’t do it.  And my regretting it can’t undo the fact that I left you.  But like I said, I’m proud of who you’ve become.” 

Keith takes a shuddering breath, scrubbing at his eyes with a fist.  “Do you really think she can forgive me?”

“I don’t think there is anything to forgive, in your case.”  Krolia says.  “But if you mean, do I think you two can heal this wound between you?  Then yes, I do.”

Keith gives up on wiping the tears away and just settles for covering his eyes with his hand, hiding even though she can’t see him.  “What if it is too late?  What if… what if this wound is fatal?”

“Then it would have already broken you both.”  Krolia tells him softly.  “All wounds heal, Keith.  Some leave deeper scars than others, but even scars can heal with time.”   

~~~~~

A few days later, on a quiet afternoon when Shiro is out at the grocery store and Keith is curled up on the couch in the living room reading a book -- _Selective Mutism in Children and Teens_ \-- when he hears the creak of the floorboards and the slow, soft pat of bare feet on the wood.  He doesn’t lift his head, but he catches sight of her out of his periphery, a head of tousled black hair poking around the open doorway to the living room.  Suki watches him silently for at least a dozen minutes, retreating slightly every time he slowly turns a page in his book before peering around the corner again when he goes still once more.  He hasn’t been fully concentrating on the words in front of him for some time now, admittedly, too busy cataloging her every movement and wondering if she is doing the same to him. 

He freezes, mid-page-turn, when she comes around the corner and steps toward him with slow, deliberate steps.  Once again, the plush lion is squished between her left palm and the sheath of Keith’s knife, her right hand wrapped around the hilt like she is ready to draw it at any time.  She pauses in front of him for a few moments, indigo eyes burning with some emotion he can’t quite catch from this angle.  Then, without a word, she climbs up on the couch and sits herself down on the opposite end. 

There’s about three feet of space between them, but it feels like nothing compared to the distance she has been keeping since she came to them.  Keith can’t breathe, and his heart feels like it is leaping in his chest, pounding so hard that she can hear it and the thrum of it will startle her and break this fragile peace between them.  He keeps his gaze rooted on the last word on the page -- “patience”, ironically enough -- while she gets settled against the pillow.  Then, he slowly finishes turning the page in his book, and she doesn’t jump up and run away at the quiet rustle of paper.  She balances the sheathed knife on one of her crossed knees in favor of holding the stuffed lion in both hands, tiny fingers carding through the soft mane.

He forces himself to relax, to keep reading.  Even then, he is only half-concentrating on the words in front of him, the rest of him watching her out of the corners of his eyes.  But she never reaches for the knife, instead busying herself with tidying the lion’s mane and tail. 

They spend an hour together in quiet, comfortable silence, then she slides off the couch and leaves with the same silence she came in with.  He hears the refrigerator door open in the kitchen, followed by the quiet clink of ceramic against metal, and he has a feeling she is helping herself to the plate of sandwiches he has been telling her to eat whenever she wants.  They give her plenty to eat at meals, but she has a lot to recover from, and learning to help herself to food from the fridge rather than the garbage can is one of those things they’ve been trying to teach her. 

He lets the book rest on his legs and releases a long-held sigh, smiling softly.  It’s only one step, but it feels like a milestone.

~~~~~

She takes to following one or both of them around the house like a duckling, after that.  Well, not so much like a duckling, perhaps more like a cat.  They go into a room, and a few minutes later, she slips in and occupies herself quietly at the other end, keeping company without really interacting.  If their business takes them elsewhere and they leave the room, she waits a few minutes before following, as if that will make it less obvious.  Eventually, she starts leaving the knife behind in her room in favor of only toting the lion around with her.  The two of them are thrilled at this development, but even then they still don’t take the blade back from her.  Instead, they don’t move it from where she leaves it on the window ledge of her room, Marmora mark glinting in the sunlight. 

Keith is washing the dishes one afternoon when he hears the soft patter of little feet come into the kitchen behind him.  He glances over his shoulder and finds her watching him from behind the refrigerator.  His heart squeezes as he turns back to the soapy dishes in front of him, keeping his movements slow and quiet.  He really thought they were past the hiding stage.  Had he done something to make her start going backwards? 

He senses, more than hears, the near-silent footsteps move closer behind him, but this time, he doesn’t look up.  The last thing he wants to do is scare her, especially when he might have already inadvertently done so.  He sets a freshly-rinsed bowl in the drying rack and reaches for a plate. 

Something touches his left leg, soft enough that he barely feels it through his jeans.  He freezes, half-washed plate in his hands, as a pair of arms wrap around his leg.  A minute later, the weight of a head rests against his mid-thigh, soon followed by a small, warm body pressing against his leg. 

Keith forces himself to count to ten in his head, desperate to not break this fragile moment.  He turns off the faucet and dries his hands on the dish-towel before reaching down and slowly -- oh so slowly -- touching the top of her hair.  When the grip around his leg tightens slightly rather than bolting away, he takes a chance and carefully goes down to one knee to look at her. 

Her expression is still guarded, violet eyes peeking out between overgrown, dark bangs, but there is a cautious sort of trust and desire in her eyes.  He lifts his arms and she steps into them, and he folds her against his chest in a hug, heart aching.  Thin arms wrap around his neck and she pushes her face into the side of his throat.  His eyes squeeze shut as a sound that is half a sigh of relief, half a quiet sob slips out of him, and he whispers her name as he strokes over her hair.  “I’ve missed you so much, baby…” Keith whispers.  “We never stopped looking for you.  I knew we would find you.”  He hugs her a little tighter. 

Suddenly she freezes up and pulls back, expression clouded again, and Keith panics.  “Oh no, I’m sorry… Did I scare you?” 

She frowns for a moment, looking thoughtful, then closes her hands around his right forearm and squeezes hard. 

He thinks about it.  “Hold you tightly?” 

She shakes her head.  Her fingers loosen to a normal amount of pressure around his arm. 

“Don’t?”   He tries again.  “Don’t hold you tightly?”

She bobs her head.  He nods, understanding.  “Okay, I can do that.  Do you want to try again?” 

She nods and steps into his arms again.  He’s more careful in how he holds her this time; firm but not restraining, reassuring but not restricting.  The comfort he aches to shower her with has to be quiet, but it is no less loving.  They can do this, he thinks to himself.  They can do this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a really subtle Fall Out Boy song reference in there if you can spot it. But it's mostly a thing about nonverbal communication in children.


	4. Chapter 4

Things get a little easier, after that.  Progress goes from halting and slow to a bit quicker, with only occasional hiccups.  After a similar hug with Shiro (and only a few quiet hints about the pressure from Keith to help it go smoothly), Suki becomes more bold in following them around the house.  Sometimes she amuses herself with toys and picture books elsewhere in the room, or sits at the window looking out at the yard, but sometimes she wanders closer and watches whatever they’re doing, head cocked and eyes curious.  If one of them is sitting on the couch reading a book, she will often sit with them, first at the other end of the couch and then pressing close to their side.  They find she likes to tuck herself under their arm or have them play with or brush her hair.  They try to teach her to read, but that stalls out when they realize she still won’t (or perhaps can’t) talk.  Instead, they read to her, focusing on sounding the words out slowly and tracing the letters with a finger while she copies the movement.  They sometimes find her laying on the floor in the sunlight with one of her old picture books in front of her, finger sliding over the printed words in a way that makes them think she is trying to read in her own way, silently. 

She also starts taking meals with them at the table rather than hiding in her room as she had before.  Despite her age, she handles forks and spoons with an inexperience that indicates she hadn’t used utensils during her time on the streets.  Knives, on the other hand, she seems more familiar with.  In one notable instance, Keith had to cover his mouth to keep from laughing at Shiro’s shocked expression when Suki abandoned her fork in favor of stabbing a little piece of chicken on a butter knife and eating it off the tip.  She then eyed the blunt edge critically and set it down with a huff, proceeding to eat the rest of her chicken with her fingers.  The learning process is a little slow, but not for any lack of dexterity (she’s actually quite nimble); it’s more that she regards their utensil lessons with skepticism, as if wondering why she needs to learn this when she has ten perfectly good fingers and has been eating that way as long as she can remember.  She does try, though, and that makes them happier than they can put into words.

It takes time, and effort on both their part and hers, but she starts collecting those milestones they missed during her absence.  Some, like running and jumping, she taught herself to do already, and others, like climbing, basic grooming, foraging, and wielding a weapon, are survival skills beyond her age that are a mark of her complicated and hazy past.  Still others are more unusual; they have to teach her that food comes from the refrigerator or pantry, not the garbage, and the confusion with which she regards that particular lesson gives them an idea of how she managed to survive on her own on the streets.  She also proves to be a remarkable pickpocket for her age -- and a bit of a hoarder, they realize when they find Shiro’s wallet, Keith’s keys, a marble, a shiny refrigerator magnet, and a bracelet hidden in her bed along with the Marmora blade -- and they have to teach her not to take things and that if she wants to see something, she just has to ask.

The one big milestone she remains stuck on, though, is speech.  She still hasn’t uttered a single word and barely a sound since she came to them (although Keith heard her gasp once and there was the time she bared her teeth and hissed at the television when it was on).  She understands speech perfectly, and manages to communicate through a loosely-structured system of nods, head shakes, tugs, taps, and blinks, but it is far from perfect and they still have misunderstandings from time to time.  Her continued silence worries them, and soon as they think she is ready, they take her to the Blade of Marmora’s base.

“I can find no obvious signs of trauma to the vocal cords or abnormalities in the throat…” Ulaz muses, clicking the pen-light off after he finishes looking down her throat.  In Keith’s lap, Suki closes her mouth, her grip vice-like on Keith’s arm around her waist like she’s hanging on to a rollercoaster seatbelt.  She’s tense, but willing to be there.  Still, only a few Blades are allowed in the room at a time so as not to frighten her.  Although friendly, they are all considerably taller and more intimidating-looking than her dads. 

“Perhaps it is selective mutism?”  Thace suggests. 

“But she doesn’t seem able to talk at all, not just in certain situations.”  Shiro says. 

“It can progress to be that severe.”  Ulaz says.  “My guess is that it rapidly worsened during the time she was missing, and perhaps when she was on her own, she felt no need to cultivate verbal communication skills.”

“She was a pretty quiet kit, if I remember.”  Antok says, sitting cross-legged on the ground to appear less intimidating.

“Humans call them ‘children’,” Krolia interjects. 

Antok shrugs, tail flicking behind him.  “Still, perhaps it is just her nature to be quiet.”  He notices the way her eyes follow the movement of his tail, and he smiles and lets it sway back and forth behind him while she tracks it. 

“She was quiet, but not silent.”  Shiro points out.  “She still made normal baby vocalizations.  She even knew a fair number of words before she was taken.”

“Then it is likely selective mutism related to whatever happened to her and reinforced by her environment.”  Kolivan says from his place near the back wall.  The presence of two larger Galra near Suki seemed to make her nervous, so he had faded to the back to let Antok get a closer look at her. 

With everyone’s focus on the conversation rather than herself, Suki seems to grow more relaxed in Keith’s arms.  She even slides off his lap and pads over to Antok, circling around him to catch the tip of his tail between her hands.  He lets out a friendly chuff and allows her to inspect it a bit before lightly flicking it out of her grasp so she can chase it. 

“You should bring her to a psychologist.”  Ulaz tells the two of them.  “I know why you may have preferred to come to me at first, but I must remind you that I am a spy by trade, not a doctor; I have only enough training to pass as a medical technician for undercover work.” 

“Perhaps you should take her back to Earth.”  Krolia suggests.  “I know you’ve made lives for yourselves here with the Intergalactic Federation, but a human psychologist might be of more use than any alien species you’ll find out here.”

“I think she does fine with aliens.”  Keith quips, watching Suki plop herself in Antok’s lap and play with his tail, Antok preening like he has been chosen for a great honor.  Krolia rolls her eyes and reaches over to ruffle her son’s hair.

Examination over with, they give her some time to meet the rest of the Blades and play a little bit.  She’s cautious, at first, every so often retreating back over to Keith or Shiro for a few moments to take a break from meeting new people, but eventually interacting more with the Blades who haven’t seen her since she was a baby.  Most of them opt to sit or kneel to be at her level, but the ones who don’t find themselves on the receiving end of leg-hugs and her weaving between their long legs almost like a cat.  She is particularly interested in running her fingers through the tufts of fur on either side of Thace’s head and Ulaz’s fur-covered sagittal crest, and she unwinds Kolivan’s braid only to try braiding it again herself (he ends up keeping the braid as she made it, lopsided and uneven as it is, with a few strands sticking out altogether). 

Upon meeting Regris, Suki runs her hand along the length of his tail, frowns, and then marches over to her dads while the Blade looks a bit distressed at the thought he may have frightened her.  Suki points at Regris, then at Antok, then herself, and reaches behind her back to pat herself on the small of her back.  Keith and Shiro exchange a look, wondering what that means.  She repeats the gesture empathically. 

“Are you asking why they have tails and you don’t?”  Keith asks, bemused.  She nods with a huff. 

Shiro chuckles and crouches down to be at her level.  “You don’t have a tail because daddy Keith doesn’t have a tail, and neither does grandma Krolia.”

Krolia’s expression twists sourly and she rubs her forehead.  “Stars, Shiro, I’ve told you not to call me that.  I am not _old_...” 

“Fine, daddy Keith’s mom doesn’t have a tail either.”  Shiro corrects.  She frowns and circles around him, peering at the small of his back. 

“Daddy Shiro is fully human.”  Keith tells her.  “No tails on his side of the family either.” 

Suki pouts and looks put-out by the idea, but reaches out to squeeze his hand -- something they’ve come to know is her way of saying ‘thank you’.  She then wanders back to the Blades sitting on the floor to feel the small, soft scales covering Regris’s tail and play with the others. 

A few hours later, she grows tired and climbs back onto Keith’s lap again to doze off against his chest.  Keith adjusts his arms to cradle her, thinking that even a couple of months ago, she would never have done let her guard down around them like this.  They finish up their conversations with the Blades, exchange goodbyes, and then head home, Shiro flying while Keith holds her. 

“I think we should take her back to Earth.”  Shiro says quietly.  “They’ve had time to adjust to being part of the Intergalactic Federation since the war with Zarkon ended, so we don’t have to worry about the Garrison quarantining us like they did with me last time.  We can find somewhere quiet to live, find a good psychologist… maybe she can even go to school someday.  She’s come so far, but… I want to help her go further.” 

Keith hums in agreement, brushing a lock of dark hair away from her forehead.  She leans into the touch and grabs his jacket in her sleep.  “She has come a long way, hasn’t she.”  A long way from the scared, feral creature they had found her as, hiding at the slightest movement and always clutching a knife to defend herself.  She hadn’t carried the blade around for some time now, feeling safe enough to not need it.  Keith presses a soft kiss to the top of her hair and sits up again with a sigh.  “Yeah, let’s do it.”

**Author's Note:**

> It might not be the end of her journey, but it's the end of this story (a bumpy start but she's on her way!)
> 
> Thank you for reading! Hit me up on my general voltron [tumblr](http://gold-leeaf.tumblr.com) or my NSFW side [tumblr](http://bouquetofwhoopsiedaisies.tumblr.com) if you want to chat or send a request!


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